Recall your ‘best experience’ as a customer engaging with any organisation, be it while interacting with the frontline staff during the product purchase or while getting your car serviced at the service center or even while complaining about the product at the call center.
What are the ingredients of this interaction that makes it your ‘best’ experience?
I started listing down a few things that crossed my mind basis my ‘best’ experiences:
- The empathy / warmth / courtesy shown by the person (softer aspects)
- The person’s knowledge or ‘grip’ on the subject (hard skills)
- The ‘end result’ of the interaction: Did it solve my problem / did I get what I wanted? (Met objective)
- My ‘mood’ or ‘state of mind’ at that point in time (must confess that most won’t reach this point of introspective confession easily!) – but ‘hand on heart’ this matters too… isn’t it?
Well more often than not, it emerged that the experience turned out to be the way it did due to a combination of all of the above.
So let’s delve little more deeper into each of the aspects through the prism of ‘manageability’
Soft skills: The multi billion dollar training industry thrives on developing behavioural skills thorough a plethora of blended learning interventions. However, not many are able to leave behind a lasting impact on the trainee behaviour and attitude.
For example, you relish the experience of having your mid-morning fresh ginger tea at the road side tea stall. No training interventions done there but don’t they get the ‘experience’ spot-on right each time? There are umpteen such examples where we ‘experience’ the best in interactions and realise that this is something ‘inherent’ and not ‘developed’!
Domain knowledge: Undeniably something that can developed through rigorous mix of on-the-job / experiential / practical training and classroom / theory sessions. Amongst all factors, this one is the most controllable not necessarily the most effective. Why do I say so?
Take for example a fine dine restaurant where your table waiter is not the one preparing the meal for you (your ultimate purpose of visiting the place or end result as we may put it)…but how many times have we based our experience in such places on how we are taken care of by this waiter. He has no ‘domain’ knowledge of the subject/end result (food in this case) but significantly influences our experience.
So I take away that ‘experience’ of the journey matters as much if not more than the end result.
Now on to ‘end result’…needless to say all other things being equal customers would always feel ‘well served’ in situations where their ultimate expectation was met. Say in the above fine dine example, the service was exemplary but the food (end objective) was ordinary…Hmmm, need I even comment!
Last but no means least and definitely not the easiest to ‘manage’…’state of mind’ of the customer. Instead of delving into reasons for the same, it’s better to focus on how and what can be done to alter it favourably to ensure the ‘experience’ is top-notch for the customer!
With this backdrop, it’s easier to correlate why most entertainment places have ambience that elevate the mood – lighting, decor, music, colours etc. Why 5 star hotels have a near-intimidating atrium which leaves you awestruck the moment you enter – that’s an almost instantaneous change in emotion / mood. Job done!
Unarguably, managing customer experience is one of the top strategic focus areas for all organisations more so in this digital connected world where everything boils down to the few minutes of the customer’s virtual engagement with our products / services. Product managers need to re-imagine their customer journeys across the lifecycle (more on that in a later post)
Keen to hear from you on your ‘best’ experiences as a customer and your takeaways on which of the boxes it ticked or added to the list.
Disclaimer: This and all blog posts by the author strictly represent the personal views of the author and in no direct or indirect way represent the views, position, strategy and opinion of any other individual or any organisation.
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